Of those listed as missing approximately 25 % are military personnel and 10 % WDCPD and WDCFD.
Of the injured and wounded 3,274 remained hospitalized at this time; 85 of these persons are suspected of involvement in the insurrection and a further 171 injured persons suspected of involvement are currently held in secure military detention.
The total number of persons suspected to have been involved in the insurrection presently held in secure military detention is 839 men and 67 women.
Since the insurrection over 1,500 persons have been detained indefinitely in secure custody under suspicion of committing offences under the regulations governing the conduct of the Military Governorship of the District of Columbia (for example, looting or acts of civil disorder such as rioting or obstructing the authorities).
Excluding those persons believed to have been directly involved in the insurgency the approximate overall ratio of casualties by occupation, gender and age is as follows:-
Total casualties 36,043; of whom 17 % were in the military or related professions, or members of the WDCPD or WDCFD. Approximately 91 % of these deaths were male, and 9 % female. Another 13 % of the casualties worked directly for the Federal Government. 1.5 % worked on Capitol Hill or at the White House.
Overall, 36 % of all casualties were adult males over the age of eighteen. 51 % of all casualties were adult females over the age of eighteen. 13 % of all casualties were aged below the age of eighteen (48 % male and 52 % female). 6 % of all casualties were aged 10 years or younger. Within the casualties figures for adults 16 % were persons over the age of sixty (39 % male and 61 % female).
Dan had no idea how anybody who was accused of being an ‘insurgent’ had a snow flake’s chance in Hell of getting a fair hearing this side of the global background radiation level returning to pre-October War levels!
None of which he was about to share with Gretchen.
“I’ve been offered a shot at an assistant counsel post on the Warren Commission,” he confessed. “Nothing about that is cut and dried though, I’ve got to meet Chief Justice Warren and he can consign me to the backwoods with a flick of his fingers.”
Gretchen hesitated, took several shallow breaths to collect her thoughts. She had started doing that again in the last few says — collect her thoughts, that was — before she offered an opinion.
“I think if I was you I’d go for the Judge Advocate’s offer.”
“Oh?”
Again there was a pause while Gretchen gathered herself to speak.
“You could make a name for yourself defending rebels,” she forced what might have been a fleeting wan smile. “Whereas everybody will be looking at Earl Warren and the senior members of the Administration on the commission into the war, but nobody’s going to remember the names of any of the assistant counsels…”
Dan grinned broadly.
“The Judge Advocate’s people say the first ‘rebellion’ trials won’t be until May or maybe June at the earliest,” he informed the woman he had adored from the moment over two years ago he had seen her across a garden in Quincy. Quincy no longer existed, neither did the garden of one of her Father’s senior partners at law; nevertheless, he had been in Gretchen’s thrall ever since. “We both know that there’s only one attorney in this room who is in a real hurry to ‘make their name’.”
He chuckled fondly, patted Gretchen’s hand.
“Do you think you can be out of here by then?”
Chapter 45
Gregory Sullivan parked his decrepit old Dodge around the block from his Aunt and Uncle’s house. Darlene had fallen quiet since the morning and he knew why; things had moved so fast between them that they had lost control and by upbringing and disposition, he suspected that she was naturally more wisely cautious about things than he was ever going to be if they both lived to be a hundred-and-one. He felt a little guilty to have jumped so far ahead, to have started making assumptions and decisions that by rights ought to have been made at leisure, rather than at a mad sprint in the heat of the moment. And now he felt like a klutz because Darlene was fretting about upsetting him and it was all his fault!
He switched off the engine and they sat in the silence as dusk fell. These days the street lights never came on until a couple of hours after sunset, and then only on the main streets. It was one of many little post-war ‘adjustments’ which nobody had ever had the chance to vote for.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“For what, sweetheart?” Darlene returned, timidly languid in the gloom.
“For being so pushy about things.”
“Oh, that,” she whispered as if that was not any kind of problem. “That’s not it,” she added, uncertainly plaintive. “The thing is you hardly know me.” She liked the sound and feel of sweetheart as it rolled off her tongue; as yet she lacked the confidence to use the endearment routinely. Darling would never do, it sounded too much like her own name and her accent transformed darling into darlin’. Aunt Molly and Uncle Harvey called Gregory Greg, she preferred Gregory even thought that was what Miranda always called him. “The thing is I ain’t no genteel little southern belle, sweetheart.”
The man opened his mouth to argue but Darlene reached across and took his right hand, guiding it back to rest on her thigh, and held tight between both her trembling hands.
“I want things to be straight between us,” she went on, her tone becoming dogged, dripping with stubbornness. “I was damaged goods a long time before I ran off with Dwayne. You should know Dwayne never laid a finger on me until we’d been in California six months. That’s just for the record. But I wasn’t no virgin when I first went with Dwayne, my Ma’s second husband made sure of that when I was fifteen…”
“Shit!” Gregory Sullivan uttered in horror. “You were raped when you were just a girl?”
“Rape?” Darlene smiled unhappily. “No, it wasn’t rape, sweetheart. It was more that if I didn’t let him do what he wanted me to do he’d beat up on my Ma and my kid brothers,” Darlene retorted resignedly. “Anyways, after a while it turned out he was shooting blanks, either that or there’s something wrong with me because I didn’t get into trouble. Maybe it was my Ma’s advice, she kept the bastard away from me when she thought I was likely to get pregnant. I don’t know, maybe I was just lucky…”
“Lucky?”
Darlene brushed past this.
“Dwayne’s people ran an auto workshop. Him and his Pa was the only niggers allowed to drive up the white folks’ end of town.” Darlene stopped, aware instantly that she had already been away from the place she had called ‘home’ so long that her whole world sense had shifted. Here she was talking like she was still in Alabama. There were Blacks and Hispanics, Latinos and Chinamen in California but there were no ‘niggers’, even the word ‘negro’ sounded and felt wrong, something alien and poisonous tipping off her remembered southern tongue. “Dwayne’s a year or two older than me. I knew him from when I was nine years old. He was always a nice guy, he always had smile on his face. I didn’t know then that his Pa was a drinker and a philanderer, the worst kind, the godly kind that carries the ‘good book’ around with him like a broken bottle.”
The bitterness rose in her throat, choked her momentarily.